Foresight: Predictions for 2014

What can we count on happening in the next 12 months? Here’s a list of predictions to watch over the next year.

Regulations, industry norms, and infrastructure

At least one major nonprofit/foundation infrastructure organization will close up shop.

Nonprofits and associations will experience new regulatory challenges from unexpected sources such as the sharing economy (for instance, from peers.org).

Digital tools for humanitarian aid will be common in disaster response and will become part of disaster infrastructure.

Donor disclosure rules will return to the media spotlight with the U.S.’s 2014 midterm elections.

We will experience a major scandal in the crowdfunding marketplace.

Beneficiaries of other services will begin to organize and be heard in the way that the “e-patient” movement is beginning to change medical care and research.

Data and technology

One winner (at least) of the Gates Foundation’s Data Interoperability Grand Challenge will launch a widely-used new product or service for social sector data by December 2014.

New ecosystems of service providers, consulting firms, and constituent management companies will evolve to help associations and foundations manage crowdfunding campaigns.

More nonprofits and other associations will use MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) as professional development opportunities for their staffs.

New mobile money tools that make phone-tophone, peer-to-peer payments easier will make informal networks of people even more visible, viable, and important.

Mandatory e-filing for all American nonprofit tax returns will cause new backlogs at the IRS, ironically slowing the timely sharing of nonprofit data.

Github will become a widely used, meaningful sharing platform for nonprofits. (And, you will learn what Github is.)

Feedback Labs will gain real traction, and similar efforts to provide beneficiaries a voice will launch beyond development aid.

Video will be the next infographic.

Privacy

Humanitarian groups will develop codes of ethics and new standards for digital privacy.

Americans and Europeans will make greater use of “personal privacy” protection services on the Internet; that is, they will use services that allow them to own and control their own data.

A nonprofit standard for data privacy will develop.

Other

American foundations will launch several new programmatic initiatives rooted in concerns about the polarized and paralyzed state of American democracy.

Takeaways are critical, bite-sized resources either excerpted from our guides or written by GrantCraft using the guide's research data or themes post-publication. Attribution is given if the takeaway is a quotation.